Exposed/Daughter of God (Gee Malik Linton, 2016/2018)

[domino harvey]

Gee Malik Linton, the director of a Keanu Reeves film called Exposed, has posted to Vimeo his original cut, called Daughter of God, which is said to be radically different than the cut Lionsgate released with a pseudonym credited as director (it runs at least 25 minutes longer and the film is focused on Ana de Armas' character rather than Reeves). A Redditor claiming to be a friend of the director claims the studio knows and is fine with it being posted for free, but I'd still catch it soon because I suspect they may not be

[John Cope]

Gee Malik Linton, the director of a Keanu Reeves film called Exposed, has posted to Vimeo his original cut, called Daughter of God, which is said to be radically different than the cut Lionsgate released with a pseudonym credited as director (it runs at least 25 minutes longer and the film is focused on Ana de Armas' character rather than Reeves). A Redditor claiming to be a friend of the director claims the studio knows and is fine with it being posted for free, but I'd still catch it soon because I suspect they may not be

This is a great film which I've been pushing elsewhere for months (and among the best of '16). A tragedy what was done to this picture but instructive too (one of the rare times where a direct comparison between the versions is tremendously revealing). Though in all truth the essential core of this is so strong that I think even the truncated release version is a powerful accomplishment.

[colinr0380]

Mark Kermode also made a video about Exposed versus this Daughter of God edit. Though in amongst his speculations about whether the film was re-edited to make it more of a commercial thriller, or to emphasise the Keanu Reeves role for name recognition, perhaps it overlooks the seemingly more obvious reason that in the Daughter of God edit focused on the Latino character as the lead that brings a lot of subtitled dialogue front and centre. However it seems wrongheaded to try and re-edit a film into some other unintended form whatever the reason.